With just over a month to go before the World Cup begins, soccer fanatics are beginning to descend upon Rio de Janeiro. But the death of a popular dancer in a Copacabana favela has escalated tensions between police and residents in the host city. Our team is gathering reports from favelas that shed light on the growing civil unrest. This week we bring you the first in a series of dispatches from Brazil, as well as footage from Kenya and Western Sahara, and the latest from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.

Here are highlights from recently featured videos on the channel:

Brazil

Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira, a dancer who appeared on a popular Brazilian TV show, was killed in late April during a police operation in a favela near Rio de Janeiro’s famous Copacabana beach. His death set off protests and clashes with police, during which another man was killed and a young child was hit with a bullet. In videos by community members, favela residents express not only anger about Pereira’s killing, but a strong sense of injustice regarding the occupation of favelas by “pacification police units” and military police.

Kenya

A month after Kenyan authorities began a nationwide anti-terrorism operation, thousands of immigrants, many refugees from neighboring war-torn countries, remain locked up and unsure of their fate. This video documents Somali and Ethiopian migrants locked up in a Nairobi police station. Detainees in the video state they lack adequate food, needed medical attention, and any explanation of their charges or their destination. For more video reports on the detention of refugees and other foreigners in Kenya, see this blog post.

Western Sahara

The UN Security Council voted last week to renew its peacekeeping force in Western Sahara until 2015. Sahrawi activists in Moroccan-occupied cities of Western Sahara protested the following day, angry that the resolution did not include human rights monitoring, which many international advocates had called for. This video shows a crowd of Moroccan police officers dragging and beating a protestor during one of those demonstrations.

This week, we’re keeping our eyes on:

Sudan and South Sudan

Sudan and South Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have found themselves stuck between violent conflict zones and unable to reach safety, food, or needed medical care. Camps in South Sudan have provided shelter for citizens fleeing violence in the South Kordofan region, but the escalating violence in South Sudan is now displacing tens of thousands more people and making the journey to safety even more precarious. Meanwhile, Sudanese forces continue their air raids on civilian areas of the Nuba Mountains. The latest target: a hospital. This striking video report contains images of the bombing last Thursday and testimony from patients and staff at the only hospital that serves this region.

The most recent citizen videos of human rights issues can always be found on our Citizen Watch and Watching Syria video playlists. Both are updated daily.

Catch the latest citizen videos by following the Human Rights Channel on Twitter (@ythumanrights).

Still image taken from this Nuba Reports video

2 thoughts on “Human Rights Video Weekly: Police Operations in Brazil, Detention of Refugees in Kenya, Protests in Western Sahara

  1. This is really want we want as a person, our human rights. Its so sad seeing our fellow people suffering these. Hope our government can help those people and govern a peaceful and beautiful place to lived in.

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